UK Ministers have been urged to agree a comprehensive shake-up of police ICT that would see the scrapping of the Police Information Technology Organisation and the 43 independent IT departments of forces across England and Wales.
The call comes from the long-awaited findings of the End to End Review of the performance and structure of PITO, the Government's chief agency for police information systems.
Its full report to the Home Office, apparently completed in February but somehow not published until 22 June, is nothing less than scathing.
The review concludes that since being set up in 1998, PITO "has largely failed to meet the needs of the police, partly through its own short-comings but principally because PITO as a concept is fundamentally flawed."
Among other criticisms, it points out that PITO has been unable to influence police IT expendure "to any significant degree". The report adds: "Beyond the large projects, the success of which has to say the least been mixed, PITOs contribution to police ICT has been marginal".
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